The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

From doubleday.com

I just submitted my latest book review at Amazon. This time it's for the book that I've been reading lately, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. I gave it 5 stars. Definitely a worthwhile read.

This is an important book that every American should read. It's angered me watching documentaries and reading books and articles about how the Bush administration has gotten away with its lawless detainment and torture policies. Who wants to read another account only to get angry again? Well, this book may be the most comprehensive account of those policies and their damaging consequences, and it is further confirmation on the need for investigations and hopefully meaningful prosecutions of the perpetrators (Bush included though hard to believe that would occur).

The book is primarily focused on the torture subject, how the policies that enabled torture were developed, who developed them, and the resulting inhumane treatment of detainees. Some detainees were important Al Queda terrorist figures, and some were people innocent of any wrongdoing. Many of the early pages are devoted to the lawyers (e.g. David Addington, John Yoo) in the Bush administration who had outsized roles in determining what the President and his executive branch should be allowed to do in this so-called war on terror. Bush is practically invisible in this account, because it is VP Cheney and his loyalists that dominated the policy making. Bush was there to basically sign off on everything.

The accounts of torture are very disturbing. Some torture resulted in death from which no one has been held to account. Many Middle Easterners were rounded up in the global dragnet. Some were indeed dangerous, but too many had nothing to do with 9/11 or terrorism at all. Yet the innocent ones still had their lives taken away from them, and they suffered great physical and emotional pain.

The book shows how these policies resulted in interrogation practices getting out of control, how interrogators became inhuman themselves, how torture became bureaucratized. There was a lot of human endeavor involved in developing and executing the torture programs.

Mayer does cover the fight that some government lawyers and personnel made against the policies, but with some exceptions, they generally failed. My one criticism of the book (and of Mayer in at least one interview) is that Mayer gives too much credit to them. One example is Alberto Mora. Yes, Mora did potentially risk his career in protesting the torture policies and was up against an array of forces, but I think he could have done more. He was entirely too naive with Jim Haynes, and he was very passive in waiting for a working group report to come out that ended up being a whitewash.

I say that this is an important book for Americans to read, because it's important to know what was done in America's name (and is why I give the book 5 stars). We as a country have essentially supported these policies by allowing them and their consequences to happen and by not holding anyone to account. Reading this book should provide further credence to any American that investigations and prosecutions are highly in order.

Bush DOJ OLC Memos

In what may be (and what I hope will be) the beginning of a movement to start investigations into the Bush administration's policies and acts in its fight against terrorism since 9/11, the Department of Justice yesterday released several DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memos from the Bush administration.

Most of the memos were written by John Yoo when he was at the OLC during the 9/11 aftermath. Two memos are by Steven Bradbury, the acting OLC head at the end of the Bush adminstration. Bradbury's memos, written in October 2008 and on January 15, 2009 (just 5 days before Obama took office), repeal the legal opinions in the Yoo memos, but they notably come long after the fact and right before Bush left office. They look to be a way of covering Bush administration asses.

The big news though are the Yoo memos. I have only read excerpts of them from blogs and news accounts, but they are getting lots of prominence for their amazingly distorted Constitutional views of Presidential power in times of military action. Yoo essentially says that the President can disregard the 1st and 4th amendments, do anything he deems necessary to ensure national security, and that Congress can not get in the way of any of this.

The reviews of these memos are starting today, and the criticism is rolling in. See Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton, and Jack Balkin for examples. The mainstream media is getting into the act too (h/t Glenn Greenwald for all). Let's hope that some momentum is gained from this towards eventual investigations. If the public becomes more aware of what the Bush administration was up to, and a clamor for investigations hopefully grows, then it will be easier for Obama and Congress to initiate them (and not resist them as they have).

The timing of the memos being released couldn't be more coincidental for me. I've begun reading Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. It's an engrossing chronicle of the Bush administration actors and their actions in the time since 9/11. There have been a number of critical books written about the Bush administration all of them hovering around the war on terror and the Iraq war, but this book may be the most important account of what the Bush adminstration has done. It goes directly to the heart of the matter: how the Bush administration followed an extreme ideological viewpoint, ran amok of the law, and consequently seriously harmed the reputation of the USA as a moral standard bearer in the world.

I've only read about a third of the book. However, I just read a chapter on the lawyers in the administration, particularly David Addington (Cheney's VP counsel and later chief of staff) and John Yoo. So the release of these memos ties in nicely with reading the book. From what I've read so far, I highly recommend the book.

Build, not destroy

I caught a segment on PBS' Frontline/World last night about a movement by local business people and citizens in Palermo, Italy to fight against the control that the Mafia has over businesses. It was and is an inspiring story about a people taking back control from a destructive presence. Here's a link to their Addiopizzo site.

The segment reminded me of something President Obama said in his inauguration speech:

"To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West: Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."

That was directed at Al Qaeda and any other organization intent on terrorism. So far, there haven't been any quotes from Obama's speech that have been highlighted as being historically memorable. I think though that last bit might be one. It's what I thought of and resonated with me when watching the story about the Palermo business people rising up against the Mafia.

Hopefully, this quote's point is resonating in the Arab world. Obama reiterated this point in his recent interview with Al-Arabiya. However, it goes both ways. With the Iraq War, does America fully understand the destruction it has caused? With the war in Gaza and prior to that Lebanon, does Israel fully understand the destruction and suffering it is causing? Hamas, of course, doesn't seem to understand the destruction it is causing either.